Bilbao hosts the already veteran Fun & Serious Game Festival

The eighth edition of the Fun & Serious Game Festival returns to Bilbao this winter, as is now traditional. From 7 to 10 December, the capital of Biscay will host a number of sessions featuring professional talks, meetings between creators and gamers, competitions, prizes and demos, activities that truly make this videogame festival one of a kind in Europe. This packed diary full of opportunities for training, meetings, creativity and entrepreneurship will be completed and made public over the coming weeks.

Not only did 25,000 visitors enjoy the F&S sessions last year, but some of the biggest names in the industry shared their talent and ideas with fans, curious visitors and indie developers. “The raison d’être of this festival, which is acquiring maturity and seniority, is to promote the videogame industry in all its dimensions,” declares Alfonso Gómez, Director of the Fun & Serious Game Festival. “For this reason, we encompass training, production, distribution, promotion to the final consumer and even the institutional framework where the videogame is developed: a booming business sector and an art comparable to cinema, literature or music. So far the welcome has been spectacular.”

In 2017, 92 media from different European countries covered the event in situ, which generated an enormous impact at a news level: more than 2,500 news items, features, stories, editorial pages and interviews in 38 media publications on all five continents.

As in previous years, the Fun & Serious Game Festival will culminate with the Prize-Giving Gala at the Guggenheim Museum, featuring the attendance of leading international figures from the videogame world, who will be presented with their Titanium Awards. The winners’ profile at previous editions includes the likes of veritable giants such as John Romero (Doom, Wolfenstein), Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia), Jeff Kaplan (Blizzard), Yuji Naka (Sonic); Alexey Pajitnov (Tetris); Trip Hawkins (Founder of EA) or the father of Monkey Island, Tim Schafer. All of them have come to Bilbao in recent years to collect their awards.

In other respects, the Fun & Serious Game Festival is, today, a veritable must-attend meeting-point for the sector. And it highlights the strategic, economic and creative relevance of an industry which, in 2017, produced a total impact of 3,577 million euros and 22,828 jobs (according to data from AEVI in its report presented in January 2018). According to this report, the videogame sector already represents 0.11% of the nation’s GDP and (according to Superdata) globally it reported a sales level of 8.9 trillion dollars in March 2018. Some 480 companies are devoted to videogames in Spain and they generate considerable employment.

Within the Festival, the Games Industry Forum (GIF), inspired by the Industry Club and Marché Du Film of film festivals, will boast a new matchMaking tool, so that it might serve as an effective meeting point for representatives from this industry: At the seventh edition, more than 600 professionals registered with this tool, which led to some 18,000 interactions, as well as 1,700 meetings, which took place in the GIF Area.

In addition, the GIF business side is reinforced by the GIF Market, a meeting-point between independent studios and publishers and investors, two of the most difficult areas for any young company in the industry. The GIF will provide the best networking and b2b tool for the industry in Spain, as well as serving as a space for training, learning and knowledge-sharing and a showcase for new professionals.

BILBAO |
From 7 to 10 December 2018

https://www.funandseriousgamefestival.com/

About Fun & Serious Festival

The Fun & Serious Game Festival, held every December in Bilbao, is the largest video-game festival in Europe and a key meeting-point for the industry as a whole.

The event’s mission is to recognize and promote the work of video-game producers, directors, artists and developers, based on a comprehensive program of conferences, roundtables, networking and activities, aimed at both companies and the general public. As is customary each year, the Festival will conclude with an exclusive Grand Prize-Winning Gala for the best video-games of the year.

The Fun & Serious Game Festival enjoys the support of the Basque Regional Government – SPRI, Bilbao City Hall and the Provincial Council of Biscay. The event’s strategic partners include Microsoft, PlayStation and Ubisoft. The Festival features the collaboration of the Spanish Video-Games Association (AEVI), UTAD, Virtualware and Digipen.